Mapam Opposes Soviet Policy of Forced Assimilation of Jews

November 19, 1963

TEL AVIV (Nov. 18)

The left-wing Mapam declared today in its official daily newspaper, Al Hamishmar, that “the Russian policy of forced assimilation of the large Jewish community cannot be tolerated.” The article was entitled “This is our official standpoint.”

Publication followed controversial statements made by several Mapam leaders, particularly after the return from Moscow of one of them, Jacob Riftin, who issued a report that the Jews were doing well in the Soviet Union. The statement in Al Hamishmar directed a number of questions at such reports, asking why Soviet Jews were deprived of their rights as Jews, why they could not develop their own culture, and why they could not have freedom of expression.

The party nevertheless expressed the hope that the solution to the Jewish problem found in other Socialist countries “need not be strange to Russia forever,” and that “we still await a change in the Russian attitude.”